I'm not making any analogies to the capabilities of previous technology. I believe it's going to seriously shake things up. I'm saying that the correct response to seeing such power on the horizon is to prepare society to harness it, so that as many benefit from it as possible, rather than be destroyed by it. There is no evidence that people are capable of stopping the technology train, it has never happened.
I am saying that if you worry about the dangers of AI, the rational course of action is to spend your efforts orienting society to have the best chance of benefiting from it, rather than spending your effort trying to prevent its development.
Now you've opened the "comparison to previous technologies" can, not me.
For chemical and nuclear weapons, it makes more sense that they are restricted, because they are explicitly weapons. They have no benefit. The technology that underpins nuclear weapons does have benefit, and there are many nuclear reactors in the world. I don't know very much about chemical weapons, but I am guessing that the same chemistry discoveries that enabled chemical weapons has also gone into making useful chemicals or medicine.
For CFCs, we realized the negative impacts, and successfully internationally coordinated to stop using them. This happened after it became clear that the real harms that were actively occurring were not worth the benefits.
I am saying that if you worry about the dangers of AI, the rational course of action is to spend your efforts orienting society to have the best chance of benefiting from it, rather than spending your effort trying to prevent its development.